Books - Mystery
Gabe Bergeron Mysteries
Gabe Bergeron appeared on my computer screen fully formed in 2015 and took over my first mystery. He's managed to maintain his verbose dominion to this day.
Death on Daugherty Creek: Camping withthe FBI (Bergeron Mystery Book 1)
Gabriel Henri Bergeron is an accountant employed by the firm of Girard-Hartmann.
And since the Hartmann part of that is Neal Hartmann, Gabe's best friend since childhood, things should have been completely copacetic.
That they were not was due to the Girard part since Gabe harbored (and still harbors) suspicions about the cleanliness, general intelligence, and criminal tendencies of one Eric Girard. Well, Eric isn't actually dirty or stupid, but he is smirky. Which is almost as bad.
So it came as a surprise to no one that Eric fired Gabe a few months back.
But Neal had called him from Janes Island State Park in Crisfield, Maryland, and implored him to journey thither. Since Neal was camping there for reasons incomprehensible to his best friend.
Well, the camping part was incomprehensible; Gabe finds the park itself quite nice. A little outdoorsy but parks are often like that.
Eric is also there. But not for long, since he and his yacht explode as Gabe watches. And the camping trip manages to go down hill from there.
Foreseeable Harm: The PurloinedPaintings (Bergeron Mystery Book 2)
Gabe Bergeron's mother had died when he was ten. He had found Leanne's body in her bedroom and being a bright child, he had dialed 911.
And then he had suppressed all memory of the event...and much about his life with her before her death.
So it was with some trepidation and heaps of misgivings, he had come to Crisfield to meet a voice on the phone who had declared that Leanne Bergeron had been murdered, and he, the Voice, could offer insights into the murderer.
This was not in fact the truth. Well, Leanne had been murdered, but the Voice had called Gabe for much less noble motives that a thirst for justice.
Motives which involved Aunt Flo and her boon companion, Ezmeralda Gutierrez, and Cuba, and Aunt Flo's first husband.
Beauty in Ashes: Paint a Pretty Picture(Bergeron Mystery Book 3)
Gabe had been tempted to forget what the Voice had said; the voice being Yuri Corzo, a smiling sociopath. Since Yuri valued truth even less than human life...if that was possible?
But Gabe's mother, Leanne, had died under suspicions circumstances, and Gabe decides that he's repressed her memory long enough, but he has only bits and pieces to start with.
So he sets about tracking down everyone who had known his mother twenty-three years earlier. He questions a boyfriend, the boyfriend's mother, a gallery dealer, his own foster mother, and Aunt Flo.
And no one seems to be willing to help him. Well, except Aunt Flo....who had been in Cuba at the time. But he's determined to ferret out the truth.
Deep is the Chesapeake: Dodging Bulletson Smith Island (Bergeron Mystery Book 4)
So Gabe had met Ms. Judith Anderson Parker (aka Jukie), a resident of the Tawes Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in Crisfield, Maryland, while visiting Ezmeralda...after her run-in with Yuri Corzo.
Jukie seemed to believe that he, Gabe Bergeron, was some sort of detective?
Which he wasn't. But she just wanted him to knock on the door of the Philadelphia home of the beauteous Erin Knauff. The same Erin who with her husband, Russell, owned Swan Island, a speck in Chesapeake Bay not far from the larger speck of Smith Island.
Even an accountant could handle that. Right?
Erin didn't answer the knocking on her door for reasons which would become apparent but not before Gabe was swept away in a storm. Which was actually better than the fate that awaited him on Swan Island.
Mr Boghossian Loses a Tenant: TouchyNeighbors (Bergeron Mystery Book 5)
Gabe liked living in Mr. Boghossian's apartment building. Well, when the heat was working. Sadly, Mr. Boghossian was less happy to have Gabe as a tenant, which was as puzzling as it was unfair.
And then Eve Smith moved in.
She was petite and fortyish and seemed at first as harmless as a collage of rainbows and unicorns. But the atmosphere darkened, and fear stalked the apartment building in high heels. Gabe discovered that every tenant appeared to be afraid of blonde, smiling Eve.
Even Mr. Boghossian who had the heart of a dyspeptic, Armenian lion.
Of course, Gabriel Bergeron wasn't intimidated, and it fell to him to investigate. Whatever evil Eve was perpetrating needed to be scotched before frightened people did frightful things.
The Nuptials of Ezmeralda Gutierrez: Dead Grooms Can't Say “I Do” (Bergeron Mystery Book 6)
Ezmeralda Gutierrez, Aunt Flo's comrade and friend, was getting married.
And she had picked that former spy and all round swell fellow, Danilo Ochoa, to walk down the aisle with her. This was assuming Danilo lived that long; not that Ezmeralda was going to kill him...probably not. They seemed happy, and Ezmeralda was not one to hide her feelings.
But Danilo had enemies lurking everywhere. And that didn't count Ezmeralda's brother or Danilo's relatives or Rey Ángel Zamora, son of Aunt Flo's dead husband; the second one.
Or possibly even Aunt Flo herself? She said she was fine with the wedding; as fine as frog's hair.
Everybody said they were happy for the couple, but Danilo kept getting almost murdered. It was a puzzlement.
Keypunchers & Other Villains: Evil Smells like Eucalyptus (Bergeron Mystery Book 7)
A job as an associate at a semi-reputable, accounting firm might not be the career pinnacle of your average wage slave, but it suited Gabe Bergeron. Even with the new partner and his new boss, Nemec.
So when the elfin Nemec appeared eager to make him very redundant, he was somewhat taken aback. True, he and Nemec, who reeked of eucalyptus and whose black eyes pulsed with evil energy, were not buddies. Still.
And Jennifer Garst, who had ruled the firm in all but name, was suddenly sad and wan and had lost her grip on the tiller of Garst, Bauer, Nemec & Garst. Mistakes were being made; clients were deeply unhappy.
The good ship GBN&G was riding low in the water, and waves of adversity were o'ertopping the gunwales. The ship was in peril, and Gabe Bergeron needed to bail faster until he could find out what was going on.
Bornheimer's Demise: Beware of Black Cadillacs & Family Secrets (Bergeron Mystery Book 8)
Gabe Bergeron saw Matt Bornheimer almost daily; he was Cory's FBI partner.
So Gabe might have been curious about Matt's girlfriends and family and history, but Matt had made it clear he would hurt one Gabe Bergeron if he acted on that natural curiosity. Even a little.
So when Ruth Justice asked him to investigate the disappearance of her father, he was blindsided. Not because he was but a humble accountant and not a detective, as he was constantly reminded, but mostly because her father was Uwe Bornheimer. Who happened to also be the father of Matthew Rilke Bornheimer.
He ran from her as if she had doused him with a bucket of scorpions.
And then Jürgen Hahn came to see him because Ruth had accused him of murdering her father. And then Matt's brothers, Adam & Noah, and all their relations and hangers-on appeared.
He resisted them all until someone tried to pulp him beneath the steel-belted radials of a Cadillac Sedan De Ville.
On Farm Deadly: Family Vacation in Virginia's Horse Country (Bergeron Mystery Book 9)
He didn't want to spend his vacation on the Poirier farm with Cory's parents. Did that make him a bad boyfriend? Maybe yes, maybe no.
And he really didn't want to get sucked into the conflict stirred up by Cory's malevolent grandmother, Josephine Loncke, over the fate of the family business, Holcomb, Inc.
Josephine was demanding that Cory become CEO of this mid-sized conglomerate. The fact that Special Agent Cory Poirier already had a job he loved with the FBI mattered not at all to Josephine. Even less, that the current CEO, Craig Shaw, was resistant to the idea of being booted out.
But he was just going to smile and endure until he could persuade Cory to leave the farm located in the heart of Virginia's horse country.
That was the plan, but then he started discovering bodies. Unidentified bodies...for the most part...killed in various and sundry ways. And then the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office focused its steely gaze upon Hugh and Laura and even Cory, but particularly upon Diane Poirier, Cory's baby sister.
Since each of them had a most excellent motive for at least one of the murders
Waters Ebb, Rocks Emerge: Beware ofSpies Asking About Your Grandfather (Bergeron Mystery Book 10)
Monroe was a scary, rogue secret agent/crook. But he hadn't shown his cubist face for months. Which was good. Except that his evil plans could be propagating unseen? Like fungal mycelia spreading under the forest leaf litter.
But why would Monroe have the slightest interest in Andrew Bergeron, the grandfather of Gabriel Bergeron? Or in Aunt Flo's Bed & Breakfast? It was a puzzlement.
And who were Ute Wetzig and Annika Graf really? Oh, he knew that they were two German-Americans from some place called Niederkrüchten. They had appeared one day and bamboozled Aunt Flo into opening the B&B.
And then three, long-lost second cousins showed up at the aforementioned B&B. Lydia, Camille, and Phillip Bergeron claimed to be the grandchildren of one Samuel Bergeron, the brother of Andrew.
It seemed that he, Gabriel Bergeron, CPA, was the only one seized with unease, with dread, with dire foreboding. Everyone else was smiling and patting him on the head like a neurotic poodle. Well, they weren't, but they wanted to. It was...unnatural, and he determined to get to the bottom of it.
And then he was utterly vindicated when the first body appeared. True, he had no idea as to the identity of the murderer. Or the motive. Or anything. After weeks and weeks of dedicated pestering of everybody even remotely involved. But still.
Really Not His Fault: Gabe Bergeron:FBI Consultant Extraordinaire (Bergeron Mystery Book 11)
Special Agent Cory Poirier had promised that he could help on a case, and wonder of wonders, his FBI overlords had agreed, but Cory kept saying things like “let's wait until I need your help with a really weird one. Gabe.”
Which seemed to imply that he was suited to weirdness? He was not weird at all.
So he was at his desk in the dead of night slaving away. Well it was 6 pm, but it was dark outside since it was October. But he was finished, and he could go home to his empty apartment on Arch Street since Cory was doing something somewhere and wouldn't answer his calls.
It was dark as he walked to the parking garage and strolled to his yellow Jeep unafraid. And if three people in clown masks and balaclavas were getting out a white van as he approached, well, it was almost Halloween???
The Not So Ancient Mariner: Dead Man's Chest (Bergeron Mystery Book 12)
Jennifer and Carla and Harry were out with pregnancy complications. Not that Harry was pregnant, but Carla his wife was.
So he was naturally concerned about his boss and coworkers at the accounting firm of Garst, Bauer & Hartmann. He was. But that didn't mean that he, Gabriel Bergeron, would meekly do the work of four! It was outrageous and criminal! Probably? Weren't there labor laws that forbade working from dawn to dusk and on Saturdays? There should be.
In any case, he had no time to be searching an old house with one Steven Bradley, a crime scene tech whom he barely knew.
The house belonged to a guy named Lars “Duke” Thorvaldsen who had disappeared. The ground floor had been unrevealing, but as they climbed the stairs, a bad smell transitioned into a stench, and the hairs on the back of his neck roused themselves in an atavistic response.
The bathroom was ahead. He wasn't sure why he was going first? Except that Duke had been a father figure to Bradley. He cracked the door. A thick, gag-inducing stench of corruption and bodily effluents oozed out.
This never boded well.
The Detective with Dishpan Hands: Bruised, Battered & Bewildered at the B&B (Bergeron Mystery Book 13)
Gabe had gone to visit his Aunt Flo (really his great-aunt) after a fire on the 11th floor of the Mahr building had reduced his workplace to a sodden, charred ruin. The accounting firm of Garst, Bauer & Hartmann and his boss, Jennifer, in particular were reeling for reasons that weren't clear or entirely fire related?
Of course, Gabe had nothing to do with the fire or the reeling, and, surprisingly, no one had even looked at him funny or cast hurtful aspersions!
Gabe was happy to work remotely from Aunt Flo's B&B near Snow Hill, Maryland, since she needed his help with feeding the guests. He had prepared sumptuous breakfasts for the ravening horde; much better than they deserved...in Gabe's opinion.
And while he was thus engaged and resident in Snow Hill, Maryland, he had willy-nilly renewed acquaintances from his youth. They had ranged from the exceedingly pleasant to the not so much.
And he may have found the first body before he had even reached the B&B, but he was steadfast in his determination not to investigate. Really.
The Face That Launched a 1000 Scams:Beware Her Fearful Symmetry (Bergeron Mystery Book 14)
She was wearing a white summer dress and outfitted with red shoes and an enormous, red purse. She was proportioned very like a buxom, well-fed woman too. The pearl earrings were a nice touch, but they couldn't make up for the coldest, darkest set of eyes he'd yet encountered.
She bared the fangs which had been carefully hidden behind her red lips until now. “Of course, you know Samantha Warrington, Mr. Bergeron!”
Well, they weren't exactly fangs but close enough. He shook his head. “I have never heard that name before in my life.” He was too tired to cope. “I'm sorry, Ms. Hayes, but you're obviously not looking for accounting services, and that is all that I can offer you...”
She dug a phone out of the red bag and found a photo. “See! This is Samantha and her vicious husband, Per Isak Sparre!”
His drooping eyes may have opened wide. There might have been some slight pupil dilation and eyebrow arching, but he said nothing. Well, inside his head, a bunch of synapses screamed, “Angelica Amici Butler!” But his exterior was the very image of blithe unconcern. Mostly.
Ms. Hayes smiled. This smile was the first human expression she'd managed since she'd traipsed into Garst Accounting. “Where is she? She's my daughter, Mr. Bergeron, and I'm sick with worry about her.”
But he hadn't been able to give her a location; mostly because he had no idea where her “daughter” might be. He had been hoped that he'd never see the rapturously beautiful Angelica again after she'd disappeared, leaving her husband, Will Butler, his high school classmate, to cope with prison on his own. And he was clinging desperately to that hope.
But then Detective Vonda Golczewski summoned him to a crime scene where the body of Ms. Millie Biggs was lying under a sheet. Millie Biggs had his address and phone number in her purse, but he could truthfully tell Vonda that he'd never seen poor Millie before.
Close upon Millie's misfortune, he became aware that a very large individual who resembled a less genial King Kong was stalking him. Said individual might have tortured and murdered Millie and her companion?
He felt sure all this was all the fault of Angelica. Somehow?
Gabe & Cory's Momentous Misadventure: Gabe's Three-Hour Hoover Tour (Bergeron Mystery Book 15)
Special Agent Cory Poirier was out of the loop, but knew something was up. Matt, his FBI partner, said, “Danielle wants you now. Ice queen. Fifty degrees Kelvin.”
Danielle Elkins was the boss of the FBI's Art Crime Team. She didn't tell him to sit, and she didn't look up at him but continued reading, her face pale and frozen.
Ten years earlier, six paintings belonging to a Brandon Petrou had been stolen from the Blackthorn Museum where they had been on loan. One of the burglars had been caught, but the paintings had never been recovered. The investigation by a senior agent, Harris Eastman, had gone nowhere. But now one of the paintings had turned up at an auction house in New York, and he had persuaded Matt to go with him to check it out.
Danielle looked up at him. “I don't remember assigning you to review the Petrou case, Poirier.”
“No Ma'am, but I wanted to see the painting for myself. I was given some legwork for Eastman in the original investigation.”
She went back to reading and then looked up again. “Have you been talking to former Special Agent Eastman, Poirier?” Eastman had retired six years ago? He shook his head. “Don't share this news with him. Is that clear, Poirier?” He nodded. She smiled her frostiest, ice queen smile. “Gabe came to mind. I was wondering if this might be the case to let him consult on? But it's your decision, of course.”
He wasn't sure why he was freaked out by Gabe working with him, but Gabe had asked, and who knew if Danielle would ever give him another chance?
Reluctant Sherlock: The Bookkeeper Who'd Rather Be Painting (Bergeron Mystery Book 16)
And Gabriel Henri Bergeron, CPA, was huddled in the lobby of his apartment building on Arch Street.
Lightning and thunder and howling gales and sheets of rain were currently assaulting his building and indeed the entire city of Philadelphia. Which was the reason for the huddling.
He sighed. He was supposed to be on vacation for the whole week, but Chase was idling at the curb in his very red, Toyota Tacoma pickup. Waiting for Gabe Bergeron. Chase was most definitely a friend and all around stalwart fellow. And he had found it impossible to refuse when he'd asked for help on a new case.
The tumult seemed to be easing just a bit, and he ran for it, leaping into the truck that rode far above the roadway on fat, spiky tires.
Chase smiled at him, lighting up the cab of the truck, radiating in all three of the “V” wavelengths: vitality, vigor, virility. And the guy was cute too. If seriously over-cologned.
Gabe sighed to himself. Deeply. Lane Colby “L.C.” Chase had tightly curled, reddish-brown hair, little brown eyes, and the masculine cheekbones and jawline of your better Grecian sculpture: one of Zeus or Achilles or Odysseus.
And a muscular body that Gabe found difficult to ignore, but he did. Well, a good fifty percent of the time. He gave Chase the very best Bergeron smile. “And where exactly does Ms. Ember Thys live, Private Investigator Chase?”
Chase looked over. When he really smiled, he had these little cheek rills instead of your common variety dimples. Chase rilled him . “It isn't far, Gabe." And they set off.
Businessman Kris Thys had gone missing eleven days ago, and his wife, young Ember Thys, was distraught enough to hire Millikan Investigations and fledgling private investigator, L.C. Chase, to find her husband. Gabe was loathe to help out after his latest misadventure, but sturdy, studly Chase had smiled at him.
Ember and Kris lived out in the country in a solitary bungalow that snuggled into the landscape and had a fairy tale air about it; Hansel and Gretel without the horror elements. So far.
Ms. Ember Thys had pale blue eyes, large and limpid, and emoted innocence. And she was with child: six months along if Gabe was any judge. She seemed to know almost nothing about her husband except that Mr. Thys traveled for work and bought “widgets” in places like India and Colombia for a company which had gone off the grid at much the same time as Mr. Thys.
But as the days passed, a rich assortment of other people began swarming around Gabe's apartment also seeking Kris Thys. Desperately. For unspecified reasons. Some were not above making threats or offering sums of money for hints about the whereabouts of Mr. Thys.
And then the body of one of the swarmers was discovered in his lobby. Which led inexorably to the swarming of police officers and detectives and even stray federal agents of an obscure and curious origin. Gabe argued that the death could have been accidental but he wasn't convincing. Even to
Farmer, Physicist, Bookkeeper, Spy: Cabal of Dead Presidents: Redux (Bergeron Mystery Book 17)
Outside the sun was shining on a June morning; dulcet breezes were sighing; flowers were wasting their sweetness on city air.
Inside Gabe Bergeron, CPA, was crunching numbers ceaselessly in his little cubicle. Well, he might be in the breakroom making coffee currently but he was work adjacent.
And then his day, week, and life started to degrade; rapidly and relentlessly. It began with his client Marge Swank showing up at Garst Accounting dressed all in black. With a veil. And this ill-omened raven refused to croak about why she had appeared in his office. Where no Bergeron man had seen her before.
And then she vanished. Which was also unprecedented. And unwonted. And unheard of.
And the following morning, tall, lean, icy-eyed Monroe, spy, intelligencer, and rogue operative, was standing over his bed and saying, “I need your help.” And Gabe was dragged from his bed...literally...to a crime scene; to Detective Vonda Golczewski's crime scene in South Philly.
Someone had shot Mitch Garza three times in center of his chest. Such wounds were almost invariably fatal; they certainly had been for Mitch.
Obviously Monroe knew a whole lot more about this Garza than Gabe or Vonda or probably anyone else in the greater Philadelphia area but he wasn't sharing. Monroe just stared into Gabe's eyes and said, “Just find out who killed Garza. I know you can do it.”
And then he vanished. Which was totally precedented. And wonted. And heard of.
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